In a recent podcast for Putman Media's International Women in Manufacturing series, Christine LaFave Grace spoke with Nandita Gupta, process controls engineer at Georgia-Pacific and a 2019 IWIM honoree. They talk about Gupta's experience entering the workforce with a mentor, and “how she hopes to provide new engineers with a similar or better experience through a formal mentoring program at Georgia Pacific.”   An article on the Media Voices Podcast site last week gave eight ways publishers are bringing in revenue from podcasts. Number eight was promoting other revenue streams. “Whether it’s mentioning an upcoming event or referring to other products across a portfolio, a bit of self-promotion can help make podcast audiences—who are often a little different to online or print ones—aware of what else you offer. A podcast audience is a particularly strongly engaged user base, and is likely to be extra responsive to m ...

Research last year from Northwestern's Medill Local News Initiative looked at audience data from three major metro publications. Their conclusion, according to NiemanLab, the frequency with which a reader comes back to a publication's website "is the single biggest predictor of retaining subscribers—more than the number of stories read or the time spent reading them."   So with that established, the goal becomes to entice your subscribers and would-be subscribers to check in a lot with your website and resources. Here are some ways to make that happen:   Send an email quiz or post a puzzle. I received this email this week from Lessiter Media. "To test your knowledge of soil health practices, No-Till Farmer, with the support of Indigo Ag, created a 6-question quiz, 'How Much Do You Know About Soil Enrichment Practices?' Take the quiz." For a previous quiz, they received 3,346 total submissions from Nov. 2019, through the end of March 2020. About 1,658 were new e ...

I received an email from Lessiter Media Chairman Frank Lessiter over the weekend talking about the success they've been having with quizzes in the last few months. So, of course, I had to take it.   Quizzes are one engagement element that can still be effective now—and frankly can bring us a little relief. (I've read that jigsaw puzzles are also reaching new popularity heights.) In fact, this morning, a sports station here presented the most compelling content in weeks by doing quiz questions to callers. And trivia nights have already found a comfort zone online—one friend just gave a thumbs-up testimonial for one and forwarded it to me. They're charging $18.   "Hey, it's Frank!" a pop-up emerges with his photo when I go to Lessiter's no-tillfarmer.com. "Have you taken the 12-question quiz, 'How Much Do You Actually Know About Cover Crops?'" It takes less than 5 minutes to complete and we'll se ...

Lessiter Media Inc. Acquires Cover Crop Innovators From Farmer and Consultant Steve Groff

According to a new study by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the American podcast industry brought in an estimated $314 million in advertising revenue in 2017, up 86% from the $169 million reported the year before. It beat projections established in the previous revenue study, which predicted that the ad business would grow to around $220 million in 2017. The study further predicts that podcast advertising will hit $659 million by 2020.   Other findings from IAB's podcast study:   Pre-produced ads make up a third of all ad types among the companies doing podcasts. Host-read ads make up the dominant remainder. In the podcasts that I've listened to, those host-read ads come off very effective. Usually they're at the beginning when the music has just ended, some playful banter has begun, and the atmosphere feels breezy—but in a good-content-to-come way.   Branded podcasts grew from 1.5% to 6.5% of all ad revenue between 2016 and 2017, disp ...

Kiplinger Names Stevens as VP of Content